Adios Friends

Last night was again one of these late night jamming session with friends, lots of liquor arranged at the last moment, card games and chit-chatting, etc etc. We always come up with a convincing reason to drink, sometimes it is as lame as saying "for fun". But last night there was a good enough reason, all of us were probably drinking for the last time together, and one of us, our striker, was leaving for India for good.

I find it so weird, I dont hang around with these people very often, most of the time I am with my CS friends, who are nothing but nerds. Even their jokes have a technical touch to it. And on the other hand, my other group, which I would usually refer to as the group I drink and play with, I meet them at most once a week, but the time I spent were more memorable compared to the time I spent with my CS friends. And if I were to tell this to my CS friends, they would say that it because we guys drink. :-/

Anyways, with all my friends leaving in a week or so, I cant imagine what TP I would be doing next year. No jamming, no soccer, so sutta breaks, no daru parties, noone to call me at 1am asking me to take them to 7'11'' for beer, no one to wake me at 5am in the morning asking me for beer, no one calling me and asking permission to break open my door so that they can have some whisky from my house, no one to ..... ahh, the list gets too long...

Perfect time to listen to Time-Pink floyd..



"Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say"

Bad laundry day..

I always wait till the critical stage to do my laundry.. push it till the last moment.. and then, today was the day, I had to do it today else the coming week will become unbearable for my apartment mates. And since I had to fly to India next week, I was just thinking if this was the right time or should I wait for a day or two..

Anyways, since I was home all day, and the machines are not used during the day, I decided to start in the afternoon. I had planned it out well, started at 2:30, which means I would finish arnd 4:30, and then I could go out to play. But it dint work out. Some smart arse probably opened my dryer (this was analyzed by my roomate later when I complained that the dryer dint work), because of which all my clothes were still wet. This means that my game plans got screwed since I had to wait for an additional our, and then spend some additional dollars too for something that was not my fault.

Just to play safe, I changed the drying machine, moved from machine 5 to 6, started the dryer, and came back home grumbling. And when I went back after an hour to pick up my clothes from the dryer, they were still wet, and according to my room mates observation, some arse opened it again in the middle and did not close the door properly. Now why on earth would someone want to check if there are clothes in the dryer, cant he just guess by looking at the timer, is someone so foolish (or so rich and stayed in Chapin) to just turn on the machine and go away ?

I dint have the patience to wait for another hour, rather, I dint want to spend a few more dollars and not get the results as expected. So I picked up all my wet clothes and have set up dryers all around my apartment, using three fans. My apartment now is full of wet clothes, and I am sure my apartment mates are cursing me..

And when I was done setting up the dryer at home, my room mate picked up his dirty clothes for laundry.. I just hope he does not face the same problems, because then, I'll have to return his fan ;)

Do companies want bad developers ?

All friends are graduating in a few weeks, most have a job, and almost all are still talking interview calls. I have to start my job hunt in a month maybe, once I have a resume, so I keep asking people about their interview and interview questions.

It is surprising, or maybe not to many people, that the interviewers ask "dumb" questions. What I consider "dumb" is something that you need not accurately at the tips of you finger, you have a fair idea, and there are more than enough online resources to answer that question. A simple example, what does strstr() do ? Ok, I know it does some string operation, probably related to substring matching. I need not know the parameters, I can always do a $man strstr. But for some reason, the interviewers want you to know all these (minute) details.

That is still fine. They give C code of the form
if (!++p+k||t&&!b+++c)
And then they ask you what is the output.. Now who the fuck is to remember all the operator precedences, and which bitch writes such code ? Ain't this bad programming practise ? If this is the way the interviewer, who probably is my Team Lead is gonna code, I am no ways working with that fellow..

Whats in the Grade ?

Semester is over and the grades are already out.. and I hate this.. I always screw up in my exams (always is since Fall 2008), and then I know I screwed up, and then the Professors send the grades to prove I really did.

And all this grading criteria is nothing but bull shit.. getting a 4.0 is not that difficult, you just need to chose the right courses, and then do the home-works they way the professor wants it, doest matter if you copy, and then in the exams, you just study what the Professor taught you in class, look at his slides, and you are done. If you try to act smart by doing more by reading the entire book, you are dumb.. :-/. Weird...

I just hope the process of job interviews is not that much of a bull shit, I know it is to some extent since they ask ridiculous questions like reversing a link list over the phone, and that too to graduates who have more than two years of experience.... So basically it is time for me to revise what I have learnt all these years in computer science rather than trying to learn more..

Exams done.. Finally!!!

It feels so great after the exams.. which could probably be the last exam of my life. I am surely not going to pursue PhD or an MBA, have done enough of studing. If at all I have to take a course next semester, I would take an advanced course which just has a project or something, no exams.

And what is more interesting is that I messed up my last paper, and the subject is "supposed" to be my domain.. Computer Architecture. I am working on binary analysis and disassembly related projects which are closely related to the Intel architecture. I think all screwed up, almost all. But most did better than me because they did not Go Green. Yes, the questions were from his slides, and since it was an open book exam, all carried print outs of the slides and I dint.. Boom!!!


Anyways, I dont care much for grades, not any more.. I am sure the grades cant be as bad as my Analysis of algorithms grades ;).

My class notes

Funny incident. I was sitting in class when a chinese undergrad sitting besides me whispers.
"eh.. excuse me, do u have a class after this ? "
"yeah"
"oh.. ok.. is it immediately after this class ? "
"no"
"gr8.. so could you wait for some after the class ? "

I was confused.. why would he want me to stay ? I thought he probably needed some help with the project. But still, to confirm, I asked
"yeah sure.. but y ? "

"I need to copy down last lectures notes"


He was probably mistaken for the notebook I was carrying. I have been using it for over 5 subjects now, and still have not managed to finish 1/5th of the book. I wonder what made him think that I write notes. I surely dont look studious.. :p

G Chat bug?

For the past couple of weeks, I have not been receiving all my offline messages on gmail. I receive some of the messages after more than 24 hrs.

First I thought that this problem was local to me, but heard of others too who have a similar problem..

Bug in 'G' ? Strange..

April Fooled

According to the April Fool Definition on wiki
"The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, enemies, and neighbors, or sending them on a fool's errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible."

Since childhood, we have been celebrating this day by playing pranks on each other. But then, the pranks used to be stupid, and the never satisfied the definition (to embarrass).


This time, a friend of mine thoroughly April "fooled" me. It was a well thought of plan, which made me panic and feel numb for a few minutes. But I am pretty sure it was not his plan, he cant.. :D

This is how I was fooled. Friend X and Y stay in a neighboring state. X owns a car and Y stays with X. X left work at 5 pm, called me when he was driving back to pick Y. After two hours, I get a call from Y saying that she has no clue where X is. (Y is a girl, so when she says X is missing and she is alone, one gets really scared). Y claims she called the police and the police said they are coming to pick her up. This is all she said and 10000 things went through my head. When she asked me if I could come there, I was totally confused and hated my self for not owning a car. There was absolutely no way for me to reach there at that hour, so I said I would leave early morning the next day. And then in some time X calls me and say "APRIL FOOL". Ass..

Suddenly I was thinking of all the clues I got. Why did she call me two hours later. And when she called, it dint seem like she was in the middle of the road waiting for someone.. And then she dint cry.. how can a girl not cry ?

Throughly Fooled!!

Tennis Finally @ SB

The weather is getting better, and I finally put my racquet to use today. I got a tennis raquet within the first couple of weeks. But I hardly got a chance to play because I could not find someone who could teach me (I cant play tennis), and after I played for the first time, I realized I cant play for nuts.






So today, temp being arnd 8 degree, and having managed to convince a friends to play with me, I implemented my tennis skills I learnt from my TV gurus :p. We played for one whole hour, both were running a lot, I was trying to reach the ball everytime and my friend was running behind the ball which I was consistently hitting outside the courts. The only thing I could manage to do well was to spin the ball (hitting the ball slowly close to the net with the raq held at an angle is what I call __spin__).

Tiring game.. too tired.. good night!!

Cake desperation

Last night I did something which I would not have done, had I been in India.
It was a friend's b'day (by the end, you will realize who he was) and my labmate was gonna "cake bake". And then, when he described what all he was gonna add, my mouth started watering. So he suggested that I come for the b'day.

Now all I knew about the birthday boy was his name. And I still decided to go and wish him. However, before I wished him, I had to introduce myself :p. And then I had MY SHARE of the cake.

dont rely on the free goodies

Last week I was very excited about the job fair, not for the companies/interns/etc., but because of the goodies I would get. I had high hopes since I missed it all the prev sem, untill I was told that the main funda of the job fair was to collect as much as goodies as possible.

So I reached the fair on time, just when it started. I collected many things ;). But then when I sat to see the loot, I was quite upset. I got two USB, the one which looked good was 250Mb, and the other which looked horrible was 1Gb. Anyways, all good.

I got a couple of T-shirts, one read S, which I changed to M (M was the largest they had). When I tried to wear them the next day, I had a feeling I was putting on weight.

The worst part is this. I was in my lab early today, was debugging some assembly code and had to note down some memory addresses. All the pens I found handly, dint work, they just left some scatch marks on the paper. And needless to say, all these pens I got from the JOB FAIR!!!

adjusting to daylight

Had a tough time today with the time moving an hour ahead because of Daylight saving, something I am still to understand. My submission was pre-poned by an hour [a bliss ;) ] and then had to force my self to sleep an hour early so that I could get up early and go to the lab.

Nothing worked out well today.. no sleep, no proper lunch, no dinner. :(

Wi-Fit upset me

I used Wi-Fit today to check my fitness. I and my friends were very excited to check the results it would print about my health. I was certain that it would produce good statistics.

So I entered the required data and started with the tests. It computed something like the center of my body mass, which was normal. Then it computed some other attributes which proved that I would not fall sick often. And then it did some tests which had to do with my reaction speed I guess (I never read what it was doing, the description was too long and was getting irritating). And in the end it said that it would guess my age. And I hate to tell that it guessed my age was 34, just 10 more than what I am :(

I won a BMW :D

I got this mail the other day

from bmw lottery reply-to bmw_department2009@hotmail.com to undisclosed-recipients date Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 5:18 PM subject CONGRATULATION YOU ARE A WINNER

hide details

Reply

Dear Winner,

The BMW Automobile Company, wishes to congratulate you on your success as one
of our Ten(10) Star Prize Winner in this years International Awareness
Promotion
(IAP) held in London on the 20th feb. 2009.

This makes you the proud owner of a brand new BMW 5 Series, car and a cash
prize of £250,000.00 GBP. To begin processing of your prize contact:

Mr. mike
BMW Agent
E-mail:bmw_department2009@hotmail.com,
Contact him, with your, Serial No: BMWP/556543450906 and Ref
No:BMW:2551256003/23.

Also provide listed information:
Names:
Sex:
Address:
Age:
Occupation:
Phone no:
Country:

Regards,
Mr. mike


I was so tempted to reply back..

The Wrestler.

Last night, I went to a movie hall for the first time in US. And now I have mixed feelings about my last night movie experience.

First of all, I was dam excited when I was gonna watch the movie. It was a late night show, 12:40am I guess. I don't think there are shows after 11pm in India. So all excited, I go to this movie hall (now how I reached that place at that hr is a different story). I was totally impressed by the ticketing system, the rates seemed cheaper, and there seemed to be more than 15 halls in that small building.

So I reached Screen 14 where we were gonna watch 'The Wrestler'. The screen was very small, looked like a private screen that Amitabh or Shah Rukh would own. There were no balcony seats, just stall :p

I dont usually prefer watching English movies, especially new ones cause you never now how good it is gonna be. I heard reviews about the movie before comin, was told it was nominated for Oscars, so I had higher expectations.


The movie sucked. The worst part of the movie was the photography/cinematography. Everything was taken so closely. The entire screen always had the full face of a character in the movie. And when people moved, the cameraman would walk behind the character, seemed like the actor had a webcam attached to some part of his body. I think the wedding camera men back in India were lot better.

But this movie reminded me of my childhood days, days when I would wait back home on Saturdays to watch a special fight like royal rumble or the cage fight, was thinking of all those all those stupid things my father hated to invest in, trump cards, post cards, stickers, video cassettes... Haha. .was fun..

restart

Mood: Bored/Frustrated.

Have been sitting home all done, did nothing constructive, have been sleeping/eating and listening to music all day. But this is what I wanted to do always, all day.

So today I decided to start blogging again, (again ? ). Will try putting in all this shitty stuff I do all day, through my frustration here, and try using better vocabulary here atleast.


So best of luck to me :p

Eh... where is the topic widget ? How do I give the topic :-/